Instagram sells SHEIN and AliExpress clothing at several times the price difference!

According to foreign media reports, a consumer discovered a fashion brand on Instagram, which claims to be a boutique run by women in Los Angeles. Its store slogan is "Transformation is Innovation", indicating that the brand sells environmentally friendly clothing that has been upgraded or made from waste fabrics.

Because of the unique styles of the clothes, consumers initially thought that the clothes in the store were all independently designed. However, the price of $60-150 made consumers suspicious. Although this price is higher than fast fashion clothes, it is lower than the price of handmade clothes.

So, when a consumer searched through Google Images, the search results led to the AliExpress website. The same piece of clothing was sold on AliExpress for less than half the price of this store.

Obviously, these clothes, which are claimed to be independently designed and handmade, are still purchased from suppliers.

As social e-commerce becomes more popular, more and more people are looking for new products and brands from social media , and new scams are emerging . Some stores on social platforms claim to be run by small business owners or independent designers and produce environmentally friendly clothing . However, some consumers have found that the clothing in these stores often comes from other platforms, and the price is usually 2 to 5 times the original price .

For example, a consumer complained on Twitter that he bought a piece of clothing from an Instagram boutique for $80, but received the clothing with a SHEIN label. The tweet received nearly 40,000 likes, and many people responded saying they had similar experiences.

Instagram has been adjusting its interface for years to attract users to shop on the app. But some of the stores on its platform, under the banner of boutiques, are still operating in the dropshipping model. Some stores even purchase goods directly from Amazon, AliExpress and SHEIN, and then sell them on the Instagram platform to earn the difference.

These stores often target young ladies, and they try their best to cater to their customers in terms of sales language, claiming that their products are unique, produced in small batches, and environmentally friendly. In addition to suppliers, these stores only need a website and a domain name to start operating. Since the cost of counterfeiting is very low, even if they are discovered, these stores can change their names and start over.

While e-commerce platforms such as Amazon are stepping up their crackdown on illegal sales practices, more and more scams are appearing on emerging social e-commerce platforms such as Instagram, which is indeed unfair to those sellers who operate in compliance with regulations.

Instagram

SHEIN

AliExpress